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In focus
- Terence Lee on another Forrest that’s making his mark in tech
- How Shopee sellers are feeling the pinch as fees rise
- Chips, chips, and more chips. We look at three AI chip startups that are raising a ton of money to beat GPUs.
Hello reader,
A few days ago, we featured Forrest Chen, who sold his startup to Alibaba for a cool US$70 million. He’s now on the verge of repeat success with YoYo, an audio-only social app that’s gone viral in rural India and Indonesia.
He’s not the only Forrest in tech, of course. There’s also the CEO and co-founder of Sea Group, Forrest Li.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
This week, we featured his company’s ecommerce arm, Shopee, for another reason: Sellers on the platform are squeezed by its rising fees and strict delivery timelines.
Shopee’s total dominance allows it to be the price setter and it says the fees are used to benefit buyers.
In any case, the naming coincidence has led me down a mini rabbit hole.
The movie Forrest Gump was a cult hit in China, and it’s the reason why Li adopted the name. Gump’s “warmth, persistence, and courage” inspired him, according to Bloomberg.
What caught my eye, though, was the movie’s plot, which was based on some real-life events. In the film, Gump became a sports celebrity by competing against Chinese table tennis players.
In the real world, these exchanges – what many called “ping-pong diplomacy” – thawed relations between the US and China in the early 1970s and kickstarted market integration between them.
Today, the trend is reversed, but whether Donald Trump likes it or not, today’s Forrests are building bridges across nations.
Forget ping-pong diplomacy – capitalism remains the best way to keep the peace.
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